“Bad Boys” doesn’t quite do them justice, these ignorant terrorist cavemen that attacked the Charlie Hebdo headquarters in Paris and killed 12 people and wounded 7 more. It takes a special kind of backwardness for a religion to be born in the Iron Age and yet never progress past the Stone Age, but Islam pulled off that feat.

While I admire the courage of the French writers and artists who published the satirical cartoons, I question their decision to put their safety into the hands of unarmed French gendarmes. That phenomenon baffles me, given the fact that the Parisian officials have ceded control of entire neighborhoods in Paris to muslim gangs. Perhaps “the City of Lights” is just a description of the torches carried by rioting muslims.

France’s strict gun laws are well known (as are the gaping holes in them), and yet this horrible massacre was committed in broad daylight with fully automatic weapons (AK-103‘s I have read, which are a fairly new model). Be sure to throw this fact in the face of any domestic gun grabbers you have to deal with.

But we don’t have a lot of details at this point about how the attack was carried out, or how the victims responded. The fact that all 3 attackers walked away after the attack without obvious injuries would seem to indicate that any defensive counterattack by their victims was not particularly effective. They might have been too shocked to react at all to the attack, thus becoming sitting ducks.

What would you do if this sort of attack was perpetrated at your workplace?

The aftermath of the Darren Wilson grand jury wasn’t a surprise to you was it?

While not discussing the merits of the case, the many clear signs leading up to the announcement all pointed to two conclusions: that a decision not to indict would be forthcoming, and that there would be potentially violent “protests” in Ferguson, MO and many other places. Failing to recognize those signs would be a symptom of willful stupidity or devout liberalism. But I repeat myself.

Some people were shocked by the decision not to indict. Such people would probably express surprise at indoor plumbing and basic arithmetic. But maybe that is a bit too harsh. After all, with a Democrat mayor, Democrat governor, Democrat attorney general and Democrat president all stirring the pot, some liberal stalwarts might have held out hope that the “fix” was in.

Leaving aside the institutional bias of the state against prosecuting agents of that state for crimes, the autopsy results and the video evidence of Mike Brown’s criminal activities is clear, unambiguous and undeniable. Except for Brown’s mom, anyway. That woman needs her t-shirt money, for real. Profiting off the death of a child that you failed to properly raise (and inciting a riot) is a right, isn’t it? I guess yelling “set this place on fire!” in a crowded city isn’t a crime, as it would be in a theater.

The illogical and capricious nature of gun laws (I’m still waiting to hear what the problem with barrel shrouds is) renders them vulnerable to circumvention by engineering changes, or even cosmetic changes. Where there is a will, there is a way.

And now Ares Defense has redesigned the AR15 lower receiver to allow a traditional Monte Carlo stock to be attached (alas this particular shoulder thing will not go up), rendering the final product legal to own in CT without registering it as an assault weapon. They promised it back in April, but it is in stores right now.

Everybody likes new things. And the advertising practices of the past 50 years have deepened and solidified our hunger for new things beyond the limits of common sense.

How else to explain the mad dash to ditch a perfectly good smartphone when a new model (that is functionally 97% identical to the old model, and light-years better than the phones of 5 years ago) is released? IT managers were not hallucinating when they observed an increase in broken phones when a new iPhone was released. You can’t have bread & circuses without the bread.

Guns are not immune to this trend. When something bigger/smaller/faster/shinier comes out, we all salivate a little. Senator Phil Gramm once described the size of his arsenal as “more than I need, but not as many as I want”. A smart consumer should mitigate his/her urge to acquire new hardware with the knowledge of: budget priorities, how easy it will be to get ammo/parts/accessories, reliability of warranty coverage, and whether or not the gun is chambered for a caliber that he/she already supports. No one is saying that those are rules to adhere to at all times. But you need to weigh all the factors against your personal situation before deciding. Bullets without a gun to shoot them are as useless as a gun with no bullets.